Speaker 1: Media. Hello, and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
Speaker 1: I am your host ed Zeitron, of course, So if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this as the episode's are, you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of a two part episode about the systemic
Speaker 1: risk caused by Open Ai, a company that's always been
Speaker 1: unsustainable and is ultimately rigged for collapse. But today I
Speaker 1: wanted to turn to a question I've been asked a
Speaker 1: few times, what are the ways the media can avoid
Speaker 1: doing this in the future, and what are the things
Speaker 1: that they could have done differently? Well, it starts pretty simple.
Speaker 1: I don't believe the media, and this partly falls upon
Speaker 1: the people running media outlets actually knows enough about the
Speaker 1: subject matter, be it the technical side of the financial
Speaker 1: side of these companies. If you've ever read an article
Speaker 1: about tech that just didn't seem to make sense, like
Speaker 1: say about an AI company, like an obtuse series of
Speaker 1: sentences that sounds rational, but when you really think about
Speaker 1: it doesn't explain what it does. It's because the writer
Speaker 1: doesn't actually understand what this saying. And that's because they're
Speaker 1: really given the time or incentivized in any way for
Speaker 1: knowing what it is they're talking about they're just there
Speaker 1: to kind of get it out the door, and well
Speaker 1: that an unalarming amount of tech writers are edited by
Speaker 1: editors that don't know a fucking thing. When chat GPT launched,
Speaker 1: the press absolutely lost their shit, despite nobody being able
Speaker 1: to describe what it actually did and why it was
Speaker 1: the future other than they could create an image or
Speaker 1: a block of text based on a prompt, and this
Speaker 1: was about the level of nuance that we'd see applied
Speaker 1: to open AI for pretty much the rest of history.
Speaker 1: Egregious to extrapolations were made in part because the media
Speaker 1: was far too willing to just copypaste or quote whatever
Speaker 1: Sam Altman said. When interviewed on stage at the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journals Tech Live event in October twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: a reporter allowed Sam Moltman to say that chat GPT
Speaker 1: and I quote has this laval reasoning capacity that's going
Speaker 1: to get better and better, and this was a great
Speaker 1: moment to say, I'm sorry, Sam, what the fuck are
Speaker 1: you talking about? And to be clear, this was October
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. It would be just under a year
Speaker 1: later that they would release an actual reasoning product. No
Speaker 1: one's bothered to return to that of course, I realize
Speaker 1: I sound like I'm being nasty or facetious. But here, right,
Speaker 1: here was an opportunity to push back on the narrative,
Speaker 1: in part because the narrative was a guy will say
Speaker 1: fucking anything and anybody will print him. The question, of course,
Speaker 1: would have been can you explain what this means? And
Speaker 1: once he mumbles out some nonsense, say I'm still not
Speaker 1: sure I understand. I genuinely believe that there are some
Speaker 1: reporters who don't want to push against the grain, but
Speaker 1: I think that there are plenty more that are scared
Speaker 1: of being wrong. Well, you're still wrong if you allow
Speaker 1: a man to lie. Sam Mortman became a billionaire because
Speaker 1: he was able to blather on nonsensically about whatever he wanted,
Speaker 1: knowing that the crowd of Gordoner's business types would rather say, Wow,
Speaker 1: he's so smart, I asked the future, than admit that
Speaker 1: they have no idea what he fucking meant. Really, fixing
Speaker 1: these problems starts with making people like Sam Mortman of
Speaker 1: Open AI and Dario Amadeo of Anthropic actually explain themselves
Speaker 1: and holding their feet to the fire even lightly on
Speaker 1: their promises, and the economics underlying their companies. You can
Speaker 1: beat this shit, you can do it. And early on
Speaker 1: Sam Mortman actually been pushed back on. He would not
Speaker 1: have been able to do this. And indeed, had everyone
Speaker 1: not just copypasted, anytime Sam Mortman said anything about, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know this chat GPT will eventually be an
Speaker 1: intelligent friend and knows everything about you, I believe he
Speaker 1: said that, or he just said AI will be These
Speaker 1: are the times to say I don't know print it
Speaker 1: in say Sam Mortman lies. Sam Morman made something up.
Speaker 1: I realized the media writ large is very bad at this,
Speaker 1: but it's so much easier in tech. The fact that
Speaker 1: both Open AI and Anthropic burned over five billion dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four is abominable and any and all
Speaker 1: interviews should have brought this up and doggedly demanded a
Speaker 1: timeline for profitability and not accepted vagueness or dodging. And
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear, I know that this
Speaker 1: if you remember the media listening to so like, I
Speaker 1: won't get Sam Mormon again, I won't get I won't
Speaker 1: get dariy Amaday, who fucking cares? These interviews suck every
Speaker 1: I think I've listened to or watched every Sam Mortman
Speaker 1: interview that's online, and they're boring. They're like eating cardboard.
Speaker 1: He's not an endearing speaker. Warrio Ama days even worse
Speaker 1: that bloviating fuck where wah blah Blind twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: The computer is going to be my best friend and
Speaker 1: my girlfriend. Well he's married. I'm not saying Dario's anyway.
Speaker 1: Daria's not going to fuck the computer. You've got me
Speaker 1: on the record. The boint is you're afraid of losing access,
Speaker 1: but you're also afraid of having a hostile interview. First
Speaker 1: of all, skill issue. Second of all, why are you afraid?
Speaker 1: Why would you possibly be afraid? These men are far
Speaker 1: from invincible. Sam Wrtman is a solid conn artist, stand
Speaker 1: a carnival barker, but when faced with blunt questions and
Speaker 1: even the slightest hint of memory about what he just said,
Speaker 1: he'd crumble. All of them would honestly Imdia train people
Speaker 1: for a living, these people a week. They're poorly trained
Speaker 1: and speciously informed and have no idea what to do.
Speaker 1: If you just refuse to black like you just sit
Speaker 1: on a question, if you're just like no, I'm not
Speaker 1: happy with your answer, I don't understand that doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: or even hey, why won't you give me a straight answer?
Speaker 1: Crazy crazy question? You could just ask any of them there,
Speaker 1: You could do it today now. The other problem is
Speaker 1: the journalists too regularly find ways to ask these obtuse,
Speaker 1: muddied questions, in part because they want to find a
Speaker 1: way to sound like they're being aggressive to their readers
Speaker 1: without ever really showing any real aggression. And let me
Speaker 1: give you one of my favorite examples. In May twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, Neelai Patel of The Verge, a man who
Speaker 1: has never met an executive outside of into it that
Speaker 1: he didn't want to let ramble, interviewed sund up As Shy,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Google, and gave one of the single
Speaker 1: worst interviews I've seen in my life. Neili Patel, as
Speaker 1: a lawyer, as the editor in chief of The Virgin,
Speaker 1: a reporter with over a decade of experience possibly more,
Speaker 1: asked multiple questions of over a hundred words objection compound
Speaker 1: question which may seem like he's being thoughtful, but is
Speaker 1: actually what I like to call the buffet, an attempt
Speaker 1: to give the illusion of nuanced analysis and conversation where
Speaker 1: you're actually giving the person you're interviewing the opportunity to
Speaker 1: answer the question they'd like to. Sometimes these points are
Speaker 1: more like rambling statements, which again may seem harmless, like
Speaker 1: Neelai is trying to have a conversation, but this is
Speaker 1: the CEO of fucking Google. You're interviewing him, not up.
Speaker 1: At one point, Nelai spends one hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 1: words asking Sun dar Pashai whether he expected publishers to
Speaker 1: act negatively to AI powered search results, but he did
Speaker 1: so in such a cludgy way that Sun Dapashai is
Speaker 1: able to wave it off, at which point Neeli commits
Speaker 1: the ultimate sin one very common in the tech media,
Speaker 1: where he doesn't listen to Peshai's answer and immediately asks
Speaker 1: another question based on some theory he has called Google zero,
Speaker 1: whether traffic from Google it ends, which was already happening. Neelike,
Speaker 1: you talk to one of the many talented people you're
Speaker 1: fucking outlet. This, by the way, is the real fundamental
Speaker 1: flaw of American journalism, where an interviewer asks the question,
Speaker 1: doesn't listen to the answer, then asks another I cannot
Speaker 1: express enough how many times this happens with tech CEOs,
Speaker 1: how much advantage they take of it and how quickly
Speaker 1: they collapse. If you listen to their answer, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, ask the follow up question relevant to it.
Speaker 1: Nelai's interview could have been far more direct. Hey, why
Speaker 1: does Google search suck? Now? I've got eight different examples
Speaker 1: of it sucking? Why are they so bad? Neeli does
Speaker 1: have an example searching for best chromebook, and he has
Speaker 1: this clumsy, mumbling, meandering bullshit thing about how in the query, well,
Speaker 1: the query in there. I didn't say what is the
Speaker 1: best chromebook? I did this and that, and he just
Speaker 1: like fumbles around with it and then allows allows some
Speaker 1: doctor to just kind of ramble him. Neli, you could
Speaker 1: just ask a simple fucking question. You're a lawyer, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, man. Maybe you're more
Speaker 1: concerned being fucking famous. The reason I'm so angry is
Speaker 1: that the AI bubble was inflated on interviews like these.
Speaker 1: I realized Neeli Patel wants to continue getting access to
Speaker 1: the executives, But how do he directly said search is bad,
Speaker 1: here's the proof it's bad, and AI results are worse,
Speaker 1: and refuse to back off of it. That would have
Speaker 1: had a meaningful effect on Google's willingness to push this shit.
Speaker 1: It would have shown other journalist's solidarity that they too
Speaker 1: could step up and spit in the face of these people.
Speaker 1: And I know some of you are going to say, heed,
Speaker 1: you can't spit in the face of them. I only
Speaker 1: feel like that because they want to run away so bad,
Speaker 1: because they don't want to have a real interview, because
Speaker 1: they don't have anything to say, they don't want to
Speaker 1: say it. And the same goes for Samultman or Warrio
Speaker 1: Dario ama Day or any other AI executive. They've garnered
Speaker 1: thousands of headlines and billions of dollars of funding by
Speaker 1: making shit up, or using lives of emission, or just
Speaker 1: being very vague and allowing people to fill in the
Speaker 1: gaps for them, which then gets published in the media,
Speaker 1: which then gets pushed to investors who then line up
Speaker 1: to invest in shit that doesn't work, or does not
Speaker 1: exist or can never exist. I even believe that access
Speaker 1: journalism can continue. We just need to show that there's
Speaker 1: a deep intolerance across the industry for marketing bullshit. A
Speaker 1: brick wall in front of anyone who would bullshit and
Speaker 1: an interest in having actual conversations versus regurgitated talking points
Speaker 1: and nodding to an audience of half conscious patagonia gargoyles.
Speaker 1: And I want to bring something up. I run a
Speaker 1: PR firm, immedia trained people. This is actually how fucking
Speaker 1: startups are talked to by journalists. You're a seed startup
Speaker 1: or a series A. You get asked these fucking questions
Speaker 1: all the time. You get grilled, you get absolutely beaten
Speaker 1: to shit. But once you reach a certain scale, once
Speaker 1: you're worth i don't know, some three hundred billion theoretical
Speaker 1: dollars that you fit into a narrative, suddenly the gloves
Speaker 1: are off and that's when the jerkins starts. I realized
Speaker 1: that was quite gross. But look, if you're listening to
Speaker 1: this as a member of the media and think I'm
Speaker 1: being mean to these executives, there's absolutely nothing stopping you
Speaker 1: from having fun, interesting conversations about the shit you love.
Speaker 1: There's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with knowing subjects deeply
Speaker 1: and finding reasons to be excited. But please, fuck actually
Speaker 1: learn what you're talking about and be excited about something
Speaker 1: that's actually happening. But I think that that might be
Speaker 1: the problem deep down. That's the art and more problem
Speaker 1: with the tech media. I don't think enough people writing
Speaker 1: about technology actually know or give a shit about technology,
Speaker 1: or at least know enough to do their jobs. They
Speaker 1: see these executives as their sports teams factions to ally behind,
Speaker 1: only learning enough about the take to be able to
Speaker 1: write embargoed articles about whatever the next thing that open
Speaker 1: aiye does, even if they don't really understand or care readers.
Speaker 1: Listners deserved better, and when all of this shit collapses,
Speaker 1: I believe they'll start treating some of the members of
Speaker 1: the tech media with well deserved scorn.